Facts / Assumptions :
- We want to bake through an air oven with belt (Marshal or Lincoln
Impinger) a recipe with pasta (spaghetti).
- the recipe will be put in an aluminium foil container (6cm high)
- the temperature of the oven is 200-250 C
- the belt speed is 7.00 min
- the recipe is as follows (from top of the aluminium container to the
bottom) : mozzarella cheese, bacon, tomato sauce, spaghetti and gouda
cheese.
- the spaghetti has already been prepared (boiled) and stored in
refrigerator. This means that the temperature of the spaghetti at the
beggining of our process is about 5-6 C
- The spaghetti are re-heated for 1 min in boiling water before entering
the aluminium container.

If we pass through the oven the above recipe the internal temperature of the product will be over 74C (practically it is over 90).

The internal temperature of the product after passing the oven is ...no more than 45C! (and it is logical)

Question : How can we raise the internal temperature of the product in order to achieve minimum of 74C?

Excuse me for such a long report. I am seeking desperately help in this and i found this site of yours wich is perfect for my liking. You see i am a food technologist and found a couple of good ideas here.

Until now i have lowered the height of the container (almost 1 cm) and removed the gouda layer from the bottom and transfered it to the middle of the container. With these an internal temperature of 55-65 has been reached. Do you have any other ideas?

Your main problem seems to be a lack of convection and conduction of the heat to the liquid portion of the food (the water in the sauce is probably the main problem). The main solution I can think of is to use a larger aluminum container (like a half sheet pan), heating the sauce if possible, and maximizing the surface area of the foodstuff by spreading it evenly on the large container, and than fluffing the spaghetti with a fork so it's less dense.

-Add a more conductive substance than aluminum, and in the practical sense I mean copper. This is a little crazy, but try layering about $5 worth of pennies between the two aluminum pens. It should raise the conductivity significantly.

-I don't have a clue how to do this, but if you could color the outside of the container black than it will absorb more radiant heat.

Think about placing something in the middle of the aluminum pan to improve the conduction of heat to the middle. Seems like a clean soda (or beer) can of water at 100C would help conduct heat to the center of the dish.

I succeed temps over 80C in the center by placing the aluminium container INTO a metal pan. By this i think the overal thermal distribution to the center of the pan was raised. The metal pan helped by means of convection and conduction. The only thing is to see if the results are repeatable ( i made the test twice, the first time the temp was 85 while the second 82). And the temp indication (using electronic thermometer) was not reached instantly (i had to wait for about 10-15 seconds).

@kgb1001001 : thank you for your thoughts and time. From the beggining it was my decision not to use metal pins. On the other hand please forgive me but i did not quite understood how (and in what way) the clean soda can of water will help me. Can you explain me more please ?

OK, I understand about not wanting the metal pins -- it distracts from the presentation of the dish by leaving a hole, and I wasn't aware that that was an issue.

As for the beer (or soda) can of water -- that's basically just acting as a big metal pin. The water at 100C would act as a thermal reservoir for the food touching it. I suggested filling it with water because it would keep the temperature of the can at a maximum of 100C until the water evaporates -- which would keep the food touching it from scorching the way it might if you left the can empty.

The idea is similar to the "beer can chicken" described elsewhere on this site, although that recipe takes advantage of the cooking power of the steam too.